


be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers

by opheliahyde



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tales, Female Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/pseuds/opheliahyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They would tell her that she married war, that she married winter and the north, but Jeyne knows she wed herself to a wolf and became a wolf herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> Written for [waxing poetic: a poetry-themed comment ficathon](http://softly-me.livejournal.com/215559.html) for the prompt: _I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)_.

Jeyne’s mother told her stories of girls in towers, with hair long and braided and as strong as rope. She ran a brush through Jeyne’s tangles as she spoke, slicing them like a sword until the strands lay smooth and silky, curling in ocean waves over her shoulders, flowing down her back. She often felt like those girls, locked up tight behind crumbling stone walls, mother her jailer, her hand a shackle around Jeyne’s wrist, her mother’s blood the iron in her veins.

There was always a boy in her mother’s stories, a thief of a boy, who stole into towers, who stole into hearts with a smile, then left as the sun rose. There was a warning in her mother’s voice, a lesson threaded with fine stitching through her words, but Jeyne paid her no heed; she never dreamt of boys ~~\--~~ only wolves prowled through her head at night.

He never needed her hair to break through her castle gates; he had an army, this boy made of sharp steel and war and blood, still a thief disguised in armor, wearing a crown. It was never long enough, or strong enough, Jeyne thinks, running her fingers over her braid ( _but later he would tangle his fingers through it and tell her it was beautiful, smiling his thief’s smile_ ).

But the boy was a wolf, Jeyne remembered that later when he lay bleeding in her bed, when he lay dying ( _she looked for teeth and claws, but all she saw were his eyes, big and wide and blue, staring at her before they slipped closed_ ). She brought him back to life with her hands, her thread sewing together his flesh as her mother taught her to embroider cloth, his blood under her nails. He wakes and she can see the razor line of his teeth as he grins, the hunger in his eyes, and she knows she was right; he was a wolf, wrapped up in the flesh of a boy.

She never knew, but it was of him she dreamt.

 

 

 

People whisper and her mother watches as Jeyne passes her days sitting at his bedside, her vigil long over. He grows stronger as he grows bolder, trailing his fingers down her arm, pressing in at her wrist, feeling her pulse jump as he leans in ( _too close, breath hot on her cheek, eyes dark and predatory as he scents her like prey_ ). He acts like a suitor, like her betrothed, but he’s neither; he’s nothing ( _he’s the wolf her mother warned her about, the thief in the tower_ ), but she can’t make herself believe it.

The wolves in her mother’s stories were always vicious, tearing girls to shreds and consuming them whole, wolves that eat girls lost in the woods ( _she doesn't feel lost_ ), but he is deceptively gentle with his soft caresses, the delicate hold on her hand when he asks her to stay.

She leans in, too, drawn in, pushing nearer.

Jeyne remembers her great-grandmother distantly, like a puff of smoke, smelling of spices and dust and decay, remembers her whispered stories of girls who were also wolves, who slipped their girlskins and went running. Jeyne feels like them, edging on danger, ready to burst out of her skin every time he comes too close; ready to leave it behind and go running with him.

It’s a dance; they’re spinning around each other, touching but never quite, only soft brushes of skin upon skin. It’s a chase, but neither is certain who is chasing whom.

 

 

 

When they tell him ( _two little boys, his brothers slain, tiny corpses a quiet horror in her mind_ ), she swears he howls.

 

 

 

Jeyne lay under him, gave herself to him, let him inside her, let him claw at her skin until he fit perfectly beneath. Her mother told her stories of this as well, of girls and wolves and how it never ended well. But she went to him willingly, bared her throat to his jaws, welcoming the danger and he kissed her for it ( _loved her for it_ ).

( _she remembers the girl and the tower and the thief boy and the things they did at night, but her belly never rounds, never never never_ )

It was comfort, he will say later, but she knows it was more, even as he whispers apologies into her skin and pleads to marry her, she knows.

 

 

 

They would tell her that she married war, that she married winter and the north, but Jeyne knows she wed herself to a wolf and became a wolf herself.

 

 

 

He tells his mother, _I took her castle and she took my heart_ , after he’s made her his rebel queen, his wolf queen and it feels like something she could have heard in a song, soft and sweet, a tale of love and none of the woe. _You're not a knight and I'm no lady, and we broke more than vows that night_ , she wants to tell him, whisper it in his ear and bite at his throat.

It was a bit messier than that, a bit splintered, shattered and stained red; a bit burnt, smoldered and smelling of smoke. There were sharp edges, the arrow in his shoulder, the knife in her hand; they began on a battlefield, he brought war into her home and some say she ended it ~~\--~~ no one will sing songs of them.

 _You took my castle and I took your heart_ , she thinks, splaying her fingers across his chest in the dark, _it's as if I ripped it from your chest and felt in pumping in my hand, weighty and hot and bleeding over my skin, as if I kept it locked away in a box._

"It's yours," he says, like it's all he has and she loves him a little more.

 

 

 

She dreamt of him and she dreamt of red, for moons and moons, coiled around him tight. She doesn’t warn him like she ought to, too fearful of the stories in her head, the ones of witches and maegis and the heroes that never heed prophecies to their folly. He dies, still, he dies the way the boy never is supposed to ( _but he’s a wolf, and wolves are always cut down in the end_ ).

Jeyne goes a bit mad, locked up in her tower again, this time with lock and key and guards, and her hair is still too short, too weak, and he’s not there it climb it.

( _they took his head and sewed a wolf’s on; they drove a sword through the heart that was hers_ )

Jeyne should have known, should have remembered; there are no happy endings.


End file.
